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The Songs of Today

Introduction

Thomas Case Sterndale Bennett was the grandson of Victorian composer William Sterndale Bennett. Born in Highgate, he was educated at the Royal College of Music and became noted as an entertainer at the piano. With the Westminster Abbey Glee and Concert Party he made two tours around the world in 1904 and 1906, and he composed over three hundred songs, of which ‘Leanin’ is the most famous. ‘The Songs of Today’ represents another appealing example.

Recordings

'Other singers over recent decades have given the songs an airing from time to time, but Thomas Allen is the very man to do it' (Gramophone)'With piano-playing by that most sensitive of accompanists, Malcolm Martineau, Sir Thomas Allen brings high art to these songs … with an affectio ...» More

Details

The songs of today, though they’re all very short
Yet are often exceedingly sweet
While the lyrics so deeply with passions are fraught
There are some I should blush to repeat.
“O heart of me see at thy feet how I lie!”
(He could lie standing up just as well!)
’Tis the lily-white soul I shall love till I die!”
So he says…
But you never can tell!

There are love songs of Africa, India, Japan,
And of ev’ry conceivable place,
They are all of them built to a family plan,
And the fashion is growing apace.
If the poems were sent to the Censor of Plays
Ere the songs were permitted to sell,
He would curl up his innocent brow in amaze,
And he’d say …
But you never can tell!

There are numerous songs with such titles as this:
‘You’re my Bumble, I am your Bee.’
Or, ‘The Cowslip’s Caress’, or ‘The Grasshopper’s Kiss’,
Or ‘The Puddle that Yearns for the Sea’.
They have all very tender pathetic refrains,
And the publisher’s profits they swell,
But the people who sing them have they any brains?
Well perhaps …
But you never can tell!